1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a face detection method and digital camera, and specifically relates to a face detection method and digital camera performing face detection according to face detection conditions, such as size of the face in a photographic object, facing direction of the face, and/or with respect to the upright direction.
2. Related Art
Conventionally, determination is made as to whether a face is present in image data, representing an object image-captured using a digital camera, and the characteristics of the face portion are extracted from the image data when a face is present, and correction is performed of the density, brightness and the like of the face portion.
This determination as to whether a face is present depends on whether the size of the face in the photographic object is large or small, and determination as to whether a face is present is made by enlarging and reducing the image size of image data, and deriving the closeness of match of portions of the image data successively clipped from the image data, against templates of a given size (surface area) having a face facing direction and inclination to the upright direction (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2006-350704).
However, the technique of JP-A No. 2006-350704 clips portions of image data for all image sizes of image data that has been enlarged or reduced, and the number of times cross-checking is performed against the templates is large, and so the face detection processing duration is long.